Belton laughed.
Carmelo did not. His tough-guy face turned fierce. “You gonna get burnt, girl,” he said as if he wanted only me to hear. “You’ll see.”
11
It took several dives to locate the right spot, but the first confirmed I was diving into a salt spring. Only a body length underwater, there was an abrupt temperature change. It was like swimming into a refrigerated vault-a sealed vault, because visibility changed from fair to poor.
A leaking mask added to my discomfort. As I neared the bottom, pressure increased, temperature dropped, and water flooded in. Salinity was so strong, it hurt my eyes. Is that what Carmelo had meant by You’re gonna get burnt, girl?
Unlikely. A man who can’t swim is a poor adviser when it comes to thermoclines.
I surfaced, stripped the mask off, and fiddled with the straps while Belton called, “What did you see?”
“Use your hands and steer me toward the wreck,” I answered. “It gets murky near the bottom.”
He directed me away from the dock and farther downriver. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll use the fish finder and drop a buoy or something.”
I said, “You watch for gators. Carmelo, I want you to watch, too. This shouldn’t take long.”
Yes, it should have been easy, but, three tries later, all I’d found was a bottle encrusted with a white coating-salt.
“Save it,” Belton called, “or swim it to me.”
I jammed the bottle in my pocket and said, “I’m not coming back until I find the darn thing.”
That was nearly true.
I took several deep breaths and knifed downward. So far, I had done quick bounce dives. This time, when I got to the bottom, I leveled out and pulled myself downriver, feeling my way through the murk. Mussel shells, waterlogged seedpods, everywhere… Then my shoulder banged into something that had an elastic give to it like a rope. It startled me. I couldn’t help but grunt in surprise.
Automatically, I started up. If I hadn’t been taught to extend my hand when surfacing, my head would have collided with something that, inexplicably, wouldn’t allow me to surface. It was a black mass that raced toward my mask moments after my fingers made contact. I exhaled another grunt, accompanied by bubbles, but stayed calm. I reminded myself I was in less than ten feet of water. Find a way around the object, I would be on the surface within moments.
It wasn’t that easy. I used both hands to push myself clear, but the black mass stayed with me. It seemed to be long and tubular when my face banged into what felt like a metal wall. I turned, tried the opposite side, and banged into another wall. Definitely metal. When I spun and hit what felt like a steel bar, I became disoriented.
A drainage culvert, I thought. Someone dumped a drain pipe.
But how in the world had I managed to thread my way into a pipe? And why was it suspended several feet off the bottom?
They used an anchor, I reasoned. That’s why it won’t budge.
Impossible. Drain culverts don’t float. Even thinking such an absurdity proved that fear had stunted my ability to reason. Something that didn’t require analysis was obvious: I would drown if I didn’t find a way out. The metal bar was the only constant in a blind world that was suffocating me. I grabbed it and felt the structure move. That provided another absurd hope-maybe I could push it to the surface, then escape.
No. My head banged against a ceiling while the object strained against its tether, the structure buoyant enough to pivot. I kicked and pulled with my free hand, but the thing refused to ascend more than a few inches. My god… was I going to die like this? I was trapped from above-yet my lower body remained unobstructed.
A final option came into my mind: If you can’t go forward, reverse your course.
The idea was reasonable, even though I was beyond reason. My heart pounded, burning oxygen, and I was nearly out of air. With exaggerated calm, I did it-pushed toward the bottom, then scrabbled backward until I felt the rope, or whatever it was, graze my leg.
So far, so good. I clamped my fingers around the thing-yes, a slimy length of rope. I followed it upward and soon my eyes fixated on an onyx glow that blessedly, blessedly, I knew was sunlight.
I had escaped. But escaped what?
Fortified by my new freedom, I indulged myself by confirming that the rope was attached to; actually paused to note a few details. Only then did I rocket to the surface and inhale big, balmy, wonderful gulps of October air.
Belton had started the engine-how had I not heard a 225 horsepower outboard fire up? It didn’t matter. I was alive. And only midway through another lazy, uneventful day in Florida. I felt like laughing but didn’t. It was because of the gentlemen rushing to my rescue. Belton’s face was white with a fixed look of terror until he spotted me. Then he visibly sagged and let Carmelo take the wheel.
I shouted, “Is Belton okay?”
Carmelo, standing with his hard, stunted eyes fixed on me, tapped the throttle forward and didn’t respond.
I watched for a moment, then yelled, “Slow down,” because the boat was already so close, I would soon disappear under the bow. Run me over, I’d be lucky to escape the skeg or spinning propeller.
Carmelo didn’t seem to hear. I shouted again: “Put the engine in neutral!” That’s when a horrible thought entered my head: Carmelo had done something to Belton. Now he was coming for me. He wanted to hurt me, perhaps kill me, for no other reason than I had whapped him in the face with a plastic snorkel.
But I was wrong-half wrong, at least-because Belton rematerialized at the wheel and switched the engine off while the stern swung so I could climb aboard. His coloring was still bad, but he showed some life by scolding me. “Young lady, you stayed under way too damn long. My heart can’t take that sort of thing.”
With a weak smile, he tried to make light of the comment, but what he had said was true and I knew it. That changed everything. I wanted to confront Carmelo and demand an explanation, but I couldn’t risk more upset. So I, too, made light of what had happened. I replied, “I must have lost track of time. But I know what’s down there now.” I tossed the mask into the boat and got my rump on the transom.
From the way Belton rambled on about how worried he’d been, I feared he actually had suffered a stroke, but then he regained his composure. “Carmelo-help the lady up and into a dry towel. I think a cup of that red wine is in order. Hannah, then and only then can you reveal the mystery to the old fool who should have never let you dive to begin with. My god, girl, I stopped keeping track at ninety seconds.”
Only ninety? I felt like I’d been trapped underwater for five minutes-and a full minute is a long dive for me. But I only laughed and waited until I was aboard to say, “Don’t get your hopes up, Belton. It’s not a boat from the Civil War.”
I expected a theatrical groan of disappointment. Instead, for an instant, his old blue eyes glittered with the focus of a younger man. It was those eyes that bore into me when he responded, “Really? That’s too bad. Then I suppose it’s one of these hopped-up bass boats. Or a motorboat. Probably stolen, so we’ll make a pile when we tell the insurance company.” A joke, but something cold at the source of it.
“Not even close,” I said.
His expression asked Are you sure?
I nodded. “What’s down there is-”
Belton interrupted, “Not until you’re seated with a towel. I can wait for the big news.”
His indifference was a lie, I sensed that. He’d already told me he didn’t trust Carmelo, but this was different. Something had happened, an incident or reckoning that had taken place recently. So I made a few glib remarks while I dried my hair and sought Belton’s eyes for an explanation. Within seconds, though, those youthful eyes faded into the face of an eighty-year-old man who had suffered a fright.